I was attending the PASS Summit 2014 in last November, in Seattle, WA, USA. This was my first time visit in the PASS Summit and also in USA. PASS stands for Professional Associations for SQL Server. You understand the purpose of the PASS by its name. Besides the Summit, I also had plan for sightseeing and family meeting. My elder brother, Zulqarnayen Helal is staying in Vancouver city in British Columbia, Canada. He came to Seattle to meet me. My sister Lilunnahar Deju, is staying in Irving, Texas, USA. I went there to meet with her family. Those were the happy moments to meet with family members in abroad.
My friend Ahsan Kabir was also there in Washington during the week. He was there to join the MVP Global Summit in Redmond, Washington, USA . He is an SQL Server expert and Microsoft MVP in SQL server.
I had started my journey to USA on the 5th November, 2014 . My flight was in Saudi Arabian Airlines at local time 5PM from Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, Dhaka, Bangladesh. I had 1hour transit in King Fahd International Airport, Airport in Dammam, Saudi Arabia and 7hours in King Khalid International Airport, Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I reached in JFK, New York on 6th November at local time 11:30AM. The immigration was fast and took less than 10mins. One of my friend was there at the airport to welcome me in the airport and handed over some dry food and a SIM card with data. Then I took a domestic flight to Seattle in JetBlue airlines at local time 5:30PM. I reach in Seattle on 6th November 9:30PM. Total duration of journey was 40hrs. Yes, it was really tiring but exiting too.
The Summit on 7th of November was the last day of its 3 days long program. I went there, in the Washington state convention center at 9:30AM. A little late, because i was lost in the bus station in the new city. After getting there I have registered in the counter and collected ID, some gift with PASS and sponsors’ logo. Then I had visited some stalls where different database service providers were attended. After the lunch, I joined in 4 technical sessions. During the sessions I met with new friends Thomas Schutte, and Samuel Awuku, they are from New York.
One of my best sessions was ‘A New Approach to Unit Testing and Integration Testing in SSIS’. Presented by Julie Smith and Scott Currie, they were awesome. At the end of the session they provided one cool t-shirt. It was great to learn new things from experts.
At 5pm the summit was over. My brother came to pick me and we had visited different place of the Seattle city. We stayed with my brother’s friend Mohammad Salahuddin Khan’s place. He is working in IBM Global Service in Seattle. Next morning on 8th November, 2014, My brother dropped me in Seattle–Tacoma International Airport where my flight was at 7AM and I flew on the way to New York.
Those you have missed the PASS Summit 2014, watch some of the sessions here. Next PASS Summit will be in October 2015. Looking forward attend to the summit.
